Now, it happens that a grosser incongruity can scarcely be supposed than that which exists between lovely features or a lovely bosom and a plum-pudding, or between the sentiment of love and the propensity to gluttony; and therefore to place the substance of the pudding, in which internal composition is alone of importance, and shape of none, under the form of features or a bosom, in which internal structure is unknown or unthought of, and shape or other external properties are alone considered, is a gross and offensive substitution, intended, not to enlighten judgment respecting form, but to pervert it, and to degrade the higher object by comparison with the lower one. The shape, moreover, is a true sign in the one case, and a false one in the other.—Of nearly similar character is the following:

"If a man, perfectly possessed both of feeling and sight-conversant with, and sensible to the charms of women- were even to be in contact with what he conceived to be the most beautiful and lovely of the sex, and at the moment when he was going to embrace her, he was to discover that the parts which he touched only were feminine or human; and that, in the rest of her form, she was an animal of a different species, or a person of his own sex, the total and instantaneous change of his sentiments from one extreme to another, would abundantly convince him that his sexual desires. depended as little upon that abstract sense of touch, as upon that of sight."

That, in detecting an imposture of this kind,

admiration would give place to disgust, only proves that the external qualities which were admired were the natural and appropriate signs of the internal qualities expected to be found under them, and that they now cease to interest only because they have become, not naturally less the signs of these qualities, but because they have by, a mere trick been rendered insignificant, because truth and nature have been violated, and because the mind feels only disgust at the imposture. I cannot help saying that if Knight was in earnest when he framed such arguments, his mind was sometimes dull as well as perverse..

"The redness of any morbid inflammation," he says, "may display a gradation of teint, which, in a pink or a rose, we should think as beautiful as 'the purple light of love and bloom of young desire; and the cadaverous paleness of death or disease, a degree of whiteness, which, in a piece of marble or alabaster, we should deem to be as pure, as that of the most delicate skin of the fairest damsel of the frigid zone: consequently, the mere visible beauty is in both the same; and the dif ference consists entirely in mental sympathies, excited by certain internal stimuli, and guided by habit."

There is here the same confusion of heterogeneous and inconsistent objects, as in the preceding cases. To judge of beauty in simple objects, each quality may be separately considered; and in this view, if the inflammation presented the same teint as the pink or the rose, then, as a mere

teint, abstracted from every other quality of the respective objects, it would be precisely as beautiful in the one as in the other; but as the color of a rose on the human body would indicate that flow of blood to the skin which can result only from excessive action, it ceases to be considered intrinsically, and is regarded only as a sign of disease. The same observations are applicable to the other case here adduced.

"The African black," he says, "when he first beholds an European complexion, thinks both its red and white morbid and unnatural, and of course disgusting. His sunburnt beauties express their modesty and sensibility by variations in the sable teints of their countenances, which are equally attractive to him, as the most delicate blush of red to us."

In treating of the Elements of Beauty, I have endeavored to show, that the more those simpler elements of beauty, which characterize inanimate bodies, are retained in more compound ones, the more beautiful these become; but that the latter retain these elements in very different degrees, dependant upon internal or external circumstances, and that such elementary beauty is often sacrificed to the higher ones of life or mind. Now, in the case of the African, he is born whitish, like the European, but he speedily loses such beauty for that of adaptation, by his color, to the hot climate in which he exists. The latter beauty is the higher and more important one, and forms for the African a profitable exchange; but the European is still

more fortunate, because, in the region he inhabits, the simple and elementary beauty is compatible with that of adaptation to climate. The climate. of Africa, the cerebral structure of its inhabitants, and the degree of their civilization, are as unfavorable to the existence of beauty as to the power of judging respecting it. What he adds as to variation in sable countenances is a mere exaggeration.

"Were it possible for a person to judge of the beauty of color in his own species, upon the same principles and with the same impartiality as he judges of it in other objects, both animal, vegetable, and mineral, there can be no doubt that mixed teints would be preferred; and a pimpled face have the same superiority over a smooth one, as a zebra has over an ass, a variegated tulip over a plain one, or a column of jasper or porphyry over one of a common red or white marble."

Here the same mistake is committed. Elementary beauty is preferred to that of adaptation to climate, fitness for physiognomical expression, &c. Knight's other arguments all involve similar errors, and admit of similar answers.

CHAPTER XI.

THE THREE SPECIES OF FEMALE BEAUTY GENERALLY VIEWED.

THESE have been already briefly mentioned. They are repeated and illustrated here.

The view which is given of them will throw light on the celebrated temperaments of the ancients. It will appear that all the disputes which have occurred respecting these, have arisen from their being founded, not on precise data, but on empirical observation, at a time when the great truths of anatomy and physiology were unknown; that, to the rectification of the doctrine of temperaments, the arrangement of these sciences, laid down in a preceding chapter, is indispensable; that some of these temperaments are comparatively simple, and consist in an excessive or a defective action of locomotive, nutritive, or thinking organs; that others, which have been confounded with these, are, on the contrary, compound; and that, from this want of classification, their nature has been imperfectly understood.

To make this clear, it is necessary to lay before the reader a succinct view of the doctrine of temperaments.